God's Little Acre (1958)

Plot Holes

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

As a huge fan of director Anthony Mann, I'm always eager to
check out anything he did, but God's Little Acre is something of an oddball curiosity on his resume. Not
coincidentally, it comes from a novel by Erskine Caldwell, whose Tobacco
Road was turned into the most peculiar
movie on John Ford's resume.

Both movies focus on poor farmers who teeter awfully close
to buffoons. And in every household there's an oversexed young lady (played by Gene
Tierney in Tobacco Road and Tina Louise
in God's Little Acre). However,
with his film, Mann employed his signature touch for exploring violence within
a specific space to fascinating effect.

The plot begins with old-timer Ty Ty Walden (Robert Ryan),
who should and could be raising cotton, but instead has spent fifteen years
digging up his property in search of gold that his grandpappy supposedly buried
somewhere. His sons Buck Walden (Jack Lord) and Shaw Walden (Vic Morrow) gamely
help him out. The fiery Buck is married to the luscious Griselda (Louise), but
she is in love with the loutish Will Thompson (Aldo Ray). Will is married to
one of Ty Ty's daughters, Rosamund (Helen Westcott). Ty Ty's other daughter,
the playful Darlin' Jill (Fay Spain) has captured the attention of the
ridiculous Pluto Swint (Buddy Hackett), who spends the entire movie campaigning
for sheriff.

Other characters include Jim Leslie (Lance Fuller), Ty Ty's
third, estranged son, who has married into money and moved to the city. Uncle
Felix (Rex Ingram) is the aged farm hand. And future TV star Michael Landon
plays an albino that Ty Ty forces to divine for the gold.

Thanks to some gorgeous, deep-focus black-and-white
cinematography by Ernest Haller, Mann is able to perfectly stage each scene for
maximum emotional impact. The holes all over the Walden family farm give an
impression of incompleteness, as well as an unsafe feeling (Pluto falls into
one hole in the dark). Going to Jim Leslie to ask for money results in a scene
of awkward misplacement as the outdoorsy Ty Ty, Darlin' Jill and Griselda wait
in the spacious, trinket-filled living room. (Darlin' Jill breaks a vase.)

Most notably, in the movie's climactic scene, Will breaks
into the shut-down textile plant where he used to earn his living and races all
over its abandoned expanses, turning the power back on. He climbs up on
catwalks and rampages down cluttered corridors. Lights flicker on and machines
grind to life; they're so noisy they even drown out the dialogue.

Mann keeps up the tension and simmering violence throughout
using these and other spaces. In another important scene, both Will and
Griselda find themselves unable to sleep on a sweltering night. Will attempts a
lustful move, and Griselda tries to resist, keeping only the corner of a
building or a railing between them. Not much, but just enough.

However, God's Little Acre doesn't seem to me to be one of Mann's great films. As adapted by the
blacklisted writer Ben Maddow (and fronted by the credited Philip Yordan), the screenplay
is very high-pitched and sometimes hysterical. Mann's subtle inflections of
violence are overrun by actual shouting matches between the characters. After
Mann's great films noir and
Westerns, it does seem an odd choice of material, and perhaps he was hoping it
would elevate him in status. (His Western, Man of the West, made the same year, is held in much higher regard.)

What's truly interesting about this movie is the strange
"hillbilly" genre that probably seems further away and more alien
today than it did back then. This novelty could be an entry point into watching
the movie, and then Mann's supreme artistry is reason enough to stay.